


I'll be close, if not right here

by fairytalefix



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-06
Updated: 2015-04-06
Packaged: 2018-03-21 14:11:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3695288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairytalefix/pseuds/fairytalefix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emma's all power and force sometimes, but Regina--she's counter-curses and protection spells and blood magic shielded castles and, while she may have been distressed when she erected her defenses, distressed isn't the same as helpless.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll be close, if not right here

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a [gif set](http://helenastacie2.tumblr.com/post/114748455186) on tumblr by helenastacie2.

“Gina,” she calls. “I'm home.” She clicks the lock, slings her coat over the railing, and unzips her boots. The house is still silent by the time her stockinged feet are free, and the absence of a reply curls sour in her stomach, makes the house seem larger than it is. She waits a moment; she calls again. The walls bounce back the name. The faucet drips in the kitchen. A bird calls in the garden. 

She checks the kitchen, the study, the back porch, calling as she does so, calling over the pat of her footfalls, over the run of water.

_Wait. Just wait._  


The run, not the drip.

She steps the stairs two at a time, ignores the ache of Henry's still-closed bedroom door (he always kept it open), and slides into their master suite. The water runs in the bathroom, but the rush is not loud enough to drown out Regina's sobs.

“Gina?” Emma calls and raps her knuckles against the door. “It's me.” She tries the handle, but the tumblers resist and she sighs. “Can you let me in?” Unlocking a door is easier with magic than hairpins, but she knows a line when she runs into one. 

Now. She knows now.

The wood is cold and hollow against her forehead and she bites her lip. Pirates moor their vessels in shallow sand lines and thieves repel over mortared ashlars; both jimmy windows and pick locks, their eye fixed on a damsel, a treasure, loot. Stealing ownership, stealing rights. They call it heroism sometimes, but heroism is an arrogant glamour that turns nos into yeses with the excuse that the damsel is cursed or confused and has somehow forgotten the definitions of her first learned words. 

A locked door says _no_. She knows that. She's learned that. She's learned how to listen, even when the sentiments aren't spoken.

She used to charge, to rush, to panic. Emma used to rescue because she was Savior, but Regina doesn't need rescuing or saving and so she's not that kind of hero anymore because Regina--

Regina is a maze of boundaries and fortified walls that would break Emma's neck if she hit them too hard. Emma's all power and force sometimes, but Regina--she's counter-curses and protection spells and blood magic shielded castles and, while she may have been distressed when she erected her defenses, distressed isn't the same as helpless. 

Regina has never been helpless.

As difficult as it is being blind and deaf on the outside, it's disastrous being in when Regina disdains company. She shuts down instead of lashing out, and her inward folding is worse than any rage. The reckless demolition of her walls only makes her build them thicker, higher, out of granite instead of limestone. Better, then, to be outside calling in. 

She'll come out when she's damn good and ready. 

Emma trusts that now.

Emma raps her knuckles against the wood again, and again says, “Gina?.” She pauses and diligently waits for the response she knows isn't coming and punctuates the pause with, “I'm here, okay?” She stills again, her fingers on the door handle waiting for a _click_ of permission that never arrives. 

Instead, she hears a muffled, “I know,” and Emma nods, relieved. 

“I'm going to start dinner,” Emma says. Chances are Regina hasn't eaten much of anything today. “I won't be far.”

She kisses her fingertips and presses them to the white painted wood. Her magic carries the message of her mind and her heart and places it quietly on the edge of the tub.

_I'm right here._  
_Never far away._  
_Come find me_  
_when you're ready._

_Sometimes leaving_  
_is how you say,_  
_“I love you.”_  
_Sometimes leaving_  
_doesn't mean,_  
_“Good bye.”_

–

She's tossing angel hair pasta with leftover chicken and a lemon tarragon sauce when she hears the upstairs faucets squeak and the water stop. She pauses, primed. The ceiling creaks the trip-trop cadence of Regina's paces as she leaves the bathroom, and Emma's chest lightens, she breathes a bit easier. 

It's easier with no doors between them. Stairs are quick to climb, but Emma hears footsteps coming down.

The broccoli is summer grass green as she swirls the florets briefly under cool water. She turns at the scuff of slippers against the linoleum and offers Regina a small, unreturned smile. Regina's draped in an old, oversized sweater she only wears in the house when they aren't expecting company. She's pulled the sleeves over her hands and sinks into a chair.

Emma knows there's a place between the guilt and the ache where comfort is needed but unwanted and, thus, ineffective. She doesn't push. Instead, she pours them each a glass of water and plates the pasta and the broccoli because this much she can do and regardless of what may be happening, this is what needs doing now. She slides a plate in front of Regina and tries not to think that she made three servings out of habit--

but the chair next to her deafens in its silence, blinds in its emptiness, and the room constricts like a straight jacket, daring her to move, and his absence bites like too-tight polyester straps. She mentally shakes herself. They can't both breakdown right now.

Regina stares sidelong at her plate without really seeing the green flecked tangle, and leaves her silverware untouched. Emma isn't hungry, either, but she twirls pasta around her fork anyway and spears a piece of chicken.

“Thank you,” Regina says, and her voice is hoarse and ridged and goes silent half-way through. She clears her throat. She tries again. “Thank you. For making dinner.”

“If by 'making dinner,' you mean 're-purposing leftovers,' you're welcome.” Metal tines scrape the porcelain plate. The sound shatters her attempt at levity. 

“Did you find--” Regina's voice falters again. Her shoulders pull tight to her neck then drop. Emma knows her hands are clenched in undulating fists under the table, hidden by old, woven wool. “Did you find anything?”

“Not yet,” Emma says. “But we will. It's only been 36 hours.”

“I should've helped today. That spell--”

“You weren't feeling well.” 

Regina laughs deep in her throat, self-mocking. “Worry is a sickness now?”

“It can be. There's a reason they call it worried sick.” Her reply is sharp and quick, and Emma's eyebrow is arched and her tone granite because this is her line. Regina's learned to ensconce herself in self-disparagement and fear, then cover the pain with a thick coat of pride. But Emma will never stop reminding her that hearts can ache and hearts can hurt because as much as Regina should know that by now, she forgets the validity of her heart's sickness. Which is funny because Regina is the one who taught her that grief can become a way of life if not properly respected.

“I--” Regina begins, and her mouth hangs open and her silence dulls her eyes and Emma knows sometimes the silence says what words never could, but then

then

a soft _crack_ rustles Regina's throat,  
a tiny bubble of air  
pushing through  
constriction,  
and that _crack_ is  
the sound of the last brick breaking,  
the click of the last tumbler retracting,

the last door opening.

And the second Regina's hand lifts trembling from her lap  
and stretches out towards Emma,  
the moment their eyes lock,  
and that first tear crests Regina's lashes,

Emma is beside her, chair abandoned, dinner forgotten, arms wrapped tight, so tight, around her wife, 

and Regina's crying as she was behind the bathroom door,  
but now Emma's crying, too,  
and there is no space between them.

Regina says, “It's my fault,”  
and Emma smooths her still-damp hair  
and kisses her forehead  
and whispers, “No, no, no. No, it's not,” 

against her olive skin even though she knows Regina won't believe her, not when Regina's determined to twist the situation into evidence of her darkness. Darkness is the fault line between villains and heroes and, despite everything she's done to lighten the way, Regina refuses to step her self-image away from the gradation. 

“I shouldn't have--” she says, and buries her face in Emma's neck, her body trembling her torment, her body struggling to breathe through the weight of her guilt. “He—Em--I shouldn't have--”

“We'll find him,” Emma assures her, and looks quick away from the empty chair at the table. Emma pulls back and tilts Regina's chin up, up to see Emma's confidence. “You hear me? We'll find him.” 

“I--,” she whispers, and she looks just as she did when the gold trail of her locator spell ended at the red town line. Perhaps fear makes everyone appear younger, plucks that chord of closeted boogeymen, of so-called future fears. 

Something dreadful has happened, a dread inescapable. A haunting, whispering dread that creeps down the back with icy fingers and clutches the stomach, the lungs, the heart with a brash and iron fist that quells all memory of hope.

In the absence, behind the walls, it's easy for a mind to formulate a catastrophe that hasn't happened. What is unknown isn't so much feared as what is known, and when destruction and loss are all the mind remembers, the unknown can only be an extrapolation of misery projected into a blank space.

A hollowness.

Death. Loss. Chaos. Destruction.  
Regina's intimate companions.  
But there are other options.

There are always other options.

But it's ridiculous to tell a mother not to worry, and not much better to say ad nauseum, “We'll find him,” but Emma's not sure what else to say because she knows they will. One way or another, they'll find him or he'll find them because, corny as it is, that's what they do. They find. Whether it's people or options or alternate routes, they're brave and they're resourceful and they don't stop looking until they find what they're looking for.

Even if what they're looking for is on the other side of a thirty foot wall or behind a bolted door or on the other side of a never ending forest. 

The lock of the front door _clicks._

“Mom?” 

The word echoes through the hallways, and Regina's breath catches and her fingers lace with Emma's and squeeze tight. Emma's head snaps up as her heart somersaults and the air feels billowy and live-wire taut at the same time because 

that's _him_.

They look at each other to confirm that, yes, that was his voice, and that, yes, that is the pattern of his footfalls, and, yes, he must be _here_.

Regina leaps up and they're racing out of the kitchen together, their hands still clasped, and Regina calls, “Henry?” And her voice trembles because both of them have dreamed his sudden reappearance and it's rare that their dreams become their reality so easily. 

But he's there. That's him. That's him when they round the corner to the entryway, him all mud stained and torn coat and tense, slumped shoulders and

“Hi,” he says, his eyes skittering like fireflies, his lip pulled between his teeth. 

“Hey,” Emma says, out of habit, out of shock. But Regina barrels past her, her arms blown wide and then clamped around their son. The ferocity of Regina's love burns up Emma's chest and she finds herself swiping at her eyes again. Regina's all she ever wanted for him. He's all she'd ever want for her.

Henry stumbles back a step at Regina's force, but slips his arms around her shoulders and pulls her close, saying, “I'm sorry. I'm really sorry.”

But Regina shakes her head and says, “No, I should have trusted you.”

“But I'm the one who ran,” Henry protests, and Emma knows he's been simultaneously angry at Regina and kicking himself for hurting her for the past thirty-six hours. The guilt won out, their love drove him home, and now an apologetic litany burns at the forefront of his brain.

Regina shushes him, pulls back, smiling, crying, her hands cupping his face and says, “I should never have given you a reason to.”

Henry opens his mouth to argue, but Emma's arms wrap them up together before he can get a word out and she mutters, “You guys. Seriously,” and presses a kiss to Henry's temple. “Welcome home,” she says.

“Thanks,” he says softly, and something shifts and she thinks that maybe he's forgetting his well-rehearsed defense because his embrace loses its stoic edge and his eyes shine a bit more clearly. And she wants to tell him

_you don't need to defend yourself, kid._

_not here_  
_not with us_  
_not with walls_  
_not with distance._

_It's important to know when to cut and run,_  
_and while most times_  
_running looks a lot_  
_like running away,_  
_running can also mean_  
_running towards._

_It's hard to tell the difference sometimes,  
even when you're the one doing the running._

But that's too sappy and a bit too long-winded. She's not sure she could say any of that without blushing or making it sound stupid, so she squeezes his shoulder and he squeezes back and she calls it good because 

here and now

there is no distance. There aren't locked doors or thick walls or mazes of space and time. Just the open arms of warm and breathing bodies wrapped up together. She reminds herself that while she knows heartache and loss and the destruction of all she thought was good, she also knows this. This love and this belonging, this tenderness and this relief.


End file.
